More than 1.4 million people had data exposed in healthcare breaches reported to the federal government last month.
That's from a collective 35 breaches that providers, health plans and their business associates in February reported to HHS' Office for Civil Rights, the agency that maintains the government's database of healthcare breaches. In terms of patients affected, that's down 32.3% from February 2019, when organizations reported 32 breaches affecting 2.1 million people.
But it's up from this past January, when organizations reported 49 breaches affecting 629,000 people.
A laptop theft in Oregon accounted for almost half of the 1.4 million figure.
Medicaid coordinated-care organization Health Share of Oregon on February 5 reported that hundreds of thousands of its members' health and demographic information had been exposed after a break-in that took place at its transportation vendor's office. The break-in involved the theft of a laptop from the vendor, GridWorks, which was not encrypted.